Wednesday, May 16, 2018

The Dark Veil: Chapter Eighteen

“You knew your husband
was going to take a shot at me, didn’t you?” Quinn demanded. His voice rang out loudly in the small
confines of the wine bar. The other
customers turned as one to stare at the table where he and Penelope were
seated. Several of them, eager to
capture any distubrance on video, readied their smartphones in anticipation.

“No, Quinn, no. I swear I didn’t.”

Quinn grasped his
companion’s wrist and pulled her to him.

Penelope cried out in
pain. “That hurts.”

Quinn looked down at his
hand as though it were somehow independent of him and had acted on its
own. “I’m sorry.” An aggrieved expression crossed his face as
he regarded the red imprints his fingers had left on Penelope’s arm. He immediately released his grip.

“How do you know it was
Cecil who shot at you?” Penelope asked as she rubbed her bruised skin. “Did you recognize him? Are you sure?”

“Who else could it have
been?” Quinn countered, but in a lower
tone of voice. “He’s the only one who
has any reason to want me dead. Curwin
knows I’m going to expose him as Behan’s murderer, and he wants to keep me from
doing that at any cost. Maybe this was
just a warning and he had no intention of actually killing me, but this was his
work all right.”

“It’s all in your
imagination. My husband has never shot
anyone in his life. We’re living in a
city where illegal guns are constantly killing people. You might not even have been the target. It might have been a stray bullet from some
drug dealer’s gun.”

“This is the Upper West
Side, not East New York. There haven’t
been any drug dealers running wild in this neighborhood since the 1970’s.” Quinn waved his hand dismissively. “Besides, there’s another reason I think your
husband might want to get rid of me.”

“You think he’s jealous,
don’t you? All we did the other day was
have lunch. I don’t know how Cecil found
out about it this time, but he did. And
yes, he was incredibly upset. Still,
that’s not enough to turn him into a homicidal maniac.”

Quinn took Penelope’s
hand, only much more gently, as he stared into her glittering yellow eyes. “Just lunch?
Is that all it was to you? Tell
me right now there was nothing more to it than that. You can’t because you know we both felt
something pass between us.”

As Quinn sat regarding
her, Penelope was overwhelmed by memories come flooding back. “It’s strange, but Behan used to say almost the
exact same thing. He’d beg me to admit I
felt something for him. But I
couldn’t. There wasn’t anything inside
me to give him.”

Quinn turned away his
eyes and looked about the wine bar – its Italian name fashionably
unpronounceable – where they sat drinking their lattes. He was embarrassed and wanted to change the
subject. “Forty years ago, this was a
junkie coffee shop called Little Joe’s.
It had a rack of stale doughnuts and a sandwich grill, but mostly it was
a place for pushers to sell smack. You
could tell who the addicts were easily enough by the way they held the sugar
dispensers over their paper coffee cups.
They could never get it sweet enough.
In the summer, instead of putting in air conditioning, the shop’s owners
would simply take out the plate glass windows and let the junkies fall off
their stools onto the sidewalk outside.

“I remember there was an after-hours
club for pimps only – they actually had to have women walking the streets to
get inside – a block further up on Columbus.
We’d watch those pimps drive down from Harlem and park their brand new Cadillacs
at the curb. After they’d finished
partying, they came in here to buy dope to shoot up the whores they had working
for them. Once the women were hooked, it
was a lot easier to keep them in line.”

“Charming,” said Penelope.
“You sound like you actually miss those
days.”

“At least the
neighborhood was alive then, not just some stodgy real estate investment the
way it is today. We had a lot more fun back
then, believe me. I was just a kid but I
can still remember what it was like. There
were plenty of times Behan hung out with Shaley at McGlade & Ward’s on the
next corner and spent the night there knocking back boilermakers until they
were both too shitfaced to even stand.
There was a party every night on this block, but nobody ever called the
cops. The whole West Side was more
diverse; it wasn’t just a bunch of uptight white business people in expensive
suits. There were plenty of actors and
dancers living in brownstone apartments in the days when rents were cheap.”

Penelope smiled. “Behan always talked about the old days in
this neighborhood too.”

“It’s not just this area
that’s changed; it’s the whole city that’s gone to shit.”

“Maybe that’s why you
take your father’s death so hard. You
see it as the end of an era. For you,
it’s more than just the killing of a single individual. It’s the loss of a city.”

Quinn considered. “I never thought of it that way,” he
admitted.

Penelope took advantage
of Quinn’s change in mood. “If you could
get past your suspicions of Cecil for a moment,” she asked, “is there anyone
else you can think of who might have been involved in Behan’s murder?”

“That’s just it. There isn’t anyone else, except maybe Cecil’s
pornographer friend Ito. And if Ito was
involved, I can’t believe your husband wouldn’t know anything about it. And why should Ito have been driven to commit
murder in the first place? He had no motive. The films he makes aren’t illegal, just
disgusting. Even if Behan had managed to
get something on him, all Ito had to do was fly home to Japan and leave it all
behind.”

“Don’t you see that
you’re only going around in circles?” Penelope couldn’t hide her vexation. “Cecil would have had as little motive as
Ito, and he certainly possesses more than enough wealth to protect himself from
whatever threat Behan could have posed.”

“So you’re saying I
should just let it go?”

“I’m saying you should
let the police handle it. Isn’t that
what everyone else is telling you to do?”
Penelope sipped from the latte in front of her; it had already grown
cold.

“Yes, especially the
police themselves.”

“Maybe it’s good advice
then.”

“If I did drop it, you
wouldn’t have me around to annoy you any longer.”

“You’re not annoying me,
just driving me crazy.” Penelope sighed
as she said it.

Quinn laughed. “I only wish I were able to drive you crazy.”

Penelope reached over and
pulled a long red hair from the sleeve of Quinn’s Armani jacket. “Oh, I think you’ve already found a woman to
drive crazy. You’re not going to tell me
your dark eyed Brazilian roommate has red hair, are you?”

Quinn found himself
blushing. “That’s from my neighbor
Mayla. She’s an actress living in my
building.”

“It’s ok,” said Penelope. She kept her voice light. “You don’t have to explain. All we did was have lunch. I’m sure you didn’t tell your redheaded
friend it was anything more than that.
Assuming you told her anything at all.”

“Wow,” said Quinn. “You’re jealous. Just listen to yourself talk.”

Penelope frowned. “Please, let’s stop acting like
schoolchildren. I’m a married woman. Wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t see one
another again?”

Quinn seemed not to have
expected her to leave so soon. “I won’t
see you again?”

“You have my number if
you want to call. But I’m not interested
in hearing any more paranoid suspicions regarding my husband, or any other
theories at all for that matter. That’s
finished as far as I’m concerned.”

“What if I just want to
talk with you again?”

“I like you, and I’m
attracted to you. But it’s not going any
further than that.”

“Now who’s being unfair? You know I’m already in love with you.”

“Then start acting like
an adult and prove it.” Penelope turned
on her heel and walked out onto Columbus to hail a cab.

“We have a few things to
talk over, Ito.”

They weren’t at the
director’s midtown studio this time.
Instead, Quinn had ridden the L train down to Bushwick where Ito was
working in a large production facility near Flushing Avenue. The address had been listed on Ito’s website.

Ito was beyond
annoyed. “Why must you keep bothering
me?”

“Because someone shot at
me and tried to kill me, and I’d like to find out who the hell it was. You can understand how I’d want to know.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t
me,” said Ito. His tone was
defiant. “I have no gun.”

“I didn’t think it was
you that pulled the trigger. But you
know who it was that wanted me dead, and you’re damned well going to tell
me. I’m going to make you talk even if I
have to beat the living daylights out of you right here.”

An assistant approached
Ito. She was in her early twenties,
blonde with blue eyes. She held a
clapperboard in her hand. “We’re ready
to start, sir,” she informed the director.

“Right away,” Ito
said. He turned to Quinn. “If you really must go on like this, wait a
few minutes at least until I finish this scene.
It’s for a ‘women in prison’ film.
We’ve been working on it all morning.
I want to get it wrapped up before moving on to anything else.”

Quinn walked to the side of
the set along with Ito and stood where he could watch the entire sequence as it
was filmed.

A bamboo stockade fence had been erected. A couple of thatched huts to the side stood
in for prisoner barracks. In the center
of the stage, which had been loosely covered with sand, a nude Filipina woman
had been bent face down over a saw horse, her arms and legs fastened to the
support legs so that she couldn’t move.

Two actors playing guards
approached the woman. They were wearing
moth-eaten uniforms that might have been relics from a World War II propaganda film.

“What happens next?”
Quinn asked.

“Bad things,” replied
Ito.

Quinn didn’t ask any more
questions. He stood silently with Ito
while the fake soldiers armed themselves with buckets and a red enema bag. The woman watched them apprehensively but was
unable to defend herself when they descended upon her.

After the take had been
completed to his satisfaction, Ito started to walk away. Quinn followed. The two guards were left behind to untie the
woman and clean her up.

“Now let’s finish with this
nonsense,” said Ito. “If I have
investors or partners in my business, that information is private. Their identities are of no concern to you.”

“You’ll excuse me,” Quinn
interrupted, “but people shooting at me is of big concern to me. At the moment, my respect for your right to
privacy is pretty well nonexistent.”

The director rolled his
eyes. “What you imagine is of no
consequence to me. I’m tired of you
threatening me and trying to intimidate me.
If you want to hit me, go ahead and do it. I will only call Detective Sloane and have
you arrested.”

Quinn stared at Ito for
several seconds without blinking.
“You’re taking a hard line, but I can see you’re really scared
shitless. Why don’t you level with me
and tell me what you know? The police
will give you protection if you cooperate.”

Ito gave Quinn a blank
look. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m in no danger from anyone, least of all
from my business associates. You’re
talking foolishly again.”

“Why are you so nervous
then?” Quinn persisted. “You never
expected to become involved in murder, did you?
Now you’re in so deep you can’t get out.
Meanwhile, whoever you’re covering for is going to keep killing. And you may be next. Your American business associates, not to
mention the yakuza, may not have enough faith in your ability to keep a
secret. I’m sure you’ve heard the
expression ‘Dead men tell no tales.’”

Ito put his hand to his
forehead. “Now you’re being
melodramatic. I should hire you to write
the script for my next film.”

“Your films actually have
scripts? That’s news to me.”

The director had had
enough. “Stop insulting me and leave.”

“I’m going, Ito. But remember what I said about telling what
you know. Once the bullets start flying
at you, it’s going to be too late to reconsider.”